


Little Comforts

by Cats_Dont_Float



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comfort, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Earth C (Homestuck), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21697978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cats_Dont_Float/pseuds/Cats_Dont_Float
Summary: Sometimes comfort doesn't require long talks and feelings jams. Sometimes it's the little things, the things that show him that Karkat understands him, that Dave needs the most. Luckily Karkat knows this too.--- A small slice of life of Dave and Karkat dealing with stuff post Sburb---
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 84





	Little Comforts

It’s been a long day of working on construction on Earth C, building houses for the fast growing population. And after a whole day of trying to put on a blank face, to be the strong, powerful god you’re supposed to be, and hiding how you’re really feeling from the citizens and from your friends, you’re glad to be home.

The sun is finally setting outside after what feels like days since it was last dark outside. Time’s been feeling a little odd recently since you managed to stop paying quite so much attention to the clock that’s constantly ticking at the edge of your subconscious. But now, as the sun sinks down behind distant lines of rooftops, filling the house with warm, gentle, golden light, you slowly pad across the kitchen floor, feeling the cold of the tiles even through your socks, and down the darkened hallway. A sliver of dim light escaping from underneath the living room door draws you in, and you wander almost instinctively towards it.

When you reach the door, you push it open, slowly at first, just enough to peek your head inside. The main lights in the room are off and the curtains are drawn as tightly as possible, but there’s a lamp glowing on a small end table next to one sofa, and in its light you can just about make out a shape huddled on said sofa. He’s curled up under a pile of what looks like every single blanket in the house, but you’d recognise the vague outline of him anywhere. After a second he looks over, stares you down, eyes glowing slightly in the dim room. You hear the familiar rustle of pages as he shuts whatever book he must be holding. You don’t need to see it to know what it will look like; a battered old Aternian romance novel, the cover creased and faded, the pages folded and worn from being turned so many times. You meet his gaze, and stare back impassively for a few seconds. Neither of you says anything, but you understand the small dip of his head as an invitation to join him, and quietly step into the room before shutting the door behind you and stepping across to the sofa. He shifts so he’s only sitting on one side, curled in on himself with his knees up to his chest, and you take a seat at the other end. But it doesn’t take him long to wriggle around and readjust himself so he’s leaning backwards against your chest as you lean back against the arm of the sofa.

Your headphones are pulled down over your ears. There’s no music playing but the familiar weight of them on your head and the way they muffle everything is keeping you calm and grounded right now. He knows this, is used to it after so many years of living together. Even so, he turns around and gently taps at one ear of the headphones, before making a hand gesture that you know means, ‘are you okay?’ You nod, wrap your arms around him, and squeeze his sides gently. That seems to be good enough for him, because he leans further back against you, opening up his book to start reading again, and you let your chin fall down into his soft hair, just between his two tiny little horns. From your positioning you can just about peer over his head and down at the foreign language on the pages, watching as he traces them with one claw. You let yourself lose track of time, just soaking up his presence.

Eventually, he shifts slightly and folds down the corner of his page, before slowly leaning down to put it onto the floor. You unwind your arms from around him just enough that he can awkwardly shuffle around so he’s on his knees facing you, and you sit up a little straighter so you can properly look him in the eyes. He shuffles his way into your lap and presses his face gently into the soft material of your shirt.

“Dave,” he says, voice muffled by the shirt and by the headphones you’re wearing. It’s the first word that’s been spoken between the two of you in hours, and it hangs uncomfortably in the air for a long time. You can’t find the words to say anything to him, and just nose into his hair and gently kiss one of his horns as you do. A rumbling purr erupts in his chest, and that noise is much nicer than any speaking could be. He seems to realise you’re not quite up for speaking, and raises his head before stretching his hands up and reaching toward your shades. You instinctively flinch back, but then you relax because it’s him, and you can trust him. He grins when you relax, sharp, crooked fangs glinting in the lamplight, and gently slides the shades away from your eyes. He puts them onto the floor with his book, and you slowly pull away your headphones and give them to him, letting him put them with the shades too. You don’t need them anymore, not now that you’ve got him here instead. He seems a little surprised by this, but gives you such a soft, genuine smile that it makes you melt.

It’s lighter in the room now your shades are gone, and you can see his face just a little better. You can even just about make out the constellations of freckles that are scattered across his face, some of them black and some of them a brilliant white colour that stands out beautifully against his grey skin.

“Dave,” he says again, and you can’t believe how his voice makes anything, even your name, sound so wonderful, so comforting. 

“Hey,” you murmur. The word is cracked, your voice not having been used in so many hours, but you feel the way he relaxes when you finally speak and it makes you feel a weird sense of pride in yourself. You’re not sure you want to speak much more though, because just that one word seems to have drained all the energy that you had left.

“Today sure was busy, huh?” He asks softly. You’re always surprised when he speaks like this, when usually his voice is so uncontrolled and loud, and knowing he speaks so gently just for you makes you fall unconditionally in love with him over and over again. 

“Yeah,” you mutter with a nod that sends strands of white hair falling into your face. Now your shades are gone, you know he can see your exhaustion, and you can feel your carefully constructed mask slipping, your facade crumbling under his gentle touch. You don’t fight it though, you’ve been doing that all day already, and you allow your barriers to fall down as you drop your forehead forwards to rest against his.

“Sshhhh,” he hushes you gently, hands protectively holding onto you as you break. “I know, I know,” he murmurs, “It’s okay to be tired. You’re home now. No one’s judging you here.”

And you believe him. You know that you are home, here in his arms, and so you pull him closer to you, settle your head down onto his shoulder and close your eyes, letting out a long, slow breath. You fall back a little, eyes fluttering closed, and you’re perfectly ready to just spend the entire night here with him until the sun decides to rise again. 

“We can’t sleep here,” he murmurs softly, as if he’s read your mind somehow, “You’ll hurt your back.”

You’re faintly aware that he’s right, knowing that the last time you fell asleep on the sofa you were barely able to walk for two days, and so when he starts to move again you sit yourself up properly and slowly get to your feet. He’s quick to follow, gathering the small pile of your items from the floor and balancing it in one hand so he can slide his other into yours and lace your fingers together with a gentle squeeze. He’s smaller than you by several inches, but having him by your side feels safe, and neither of you even think to turn the lights on as you walk upstairs, guided by his nocturnal vision and your uncanny ability to judge your surroundings almost perfectly even without seeing them.

“Hey, Karkat,” you whisper as the two of your step into the darkness of your bedroom.

“Yeah?” he replies, just as quietly. You feel his hand slide away from yours, and though you grab at the air he’s already moving away. You panic for just a slight second, just enough for your breath to hitch ever so slightly, and then realise that he’s just turning a lamp on in the corner of the room.

“Thanks,” you murmur quietly when you’ve calmed yourself down. He doesn’t seem to notice your slight pause, or, if he does, he just doesn’t mention it. He just glances over his shoulder from where he’s now crouched by a set of drawers, rifling through them for clothes of some sort, and flashes a smile at you. It’s one of those smiles of his that are just for you, soft and tentative and full of too much feeling, not like the fake smiles he uses when he’s pretending to care about something he doesn’t; those ones never reach his eyes and are always just a little too sharp at the edges.

“You know I’d do anything for you.” He’s suddenly in front of you again, he must have moved whilst you were dwelling on his smile, and holding out a shirt towards you. And you trust his words, you know he really would do anything for you.

You just nod, not sure what to say, and take the shirt, feeling the soft, worn cotton under your fingers, calloused from years of clutching at swords underneath burning Texan sunshine. It’s one of a whole pile of shirts that you and Karkat deliberately alchemised to be just a few sizes too big, perfectly comfortable to sleep in (and to wear on those days when neither of you can quite bring yourself to get dressed), and you quickly pull of your godtier pyjamas and change as he finds a shirt for himself.

Once you’ve got it on, you find that the shirt he’s given you is one of the ones with his cancer symbol on the front, and you trace the shape with a finger for a second with a fond smile. When you look back up he’s wearing a shirt you made for him that’s got a badly drawn cartoon crab on the front, and you grin tiredly at the sight. He shakes his head at your amusement, then snatches up a bottle of pills from your bedside table, and winces apologetically when he sees you flinch at the sudden rattling sound it makes. Usually he’d toss the pill bottle over towards you, but tonight he passes it carefully, knowing you’re too tired to even lift your arm to catch a flying bottle of pills. It’ll probably just end up smacking you in the face if he tries.

You tip out one of your sleeping pills and swallow it back without any water. He grimaces, just like he does every time but doesn’t mention it, and just takes the bottle back from you and stores it away. It’s nice to have little routines like this, you think, to remind you that everything’s okay now, that life’s getting back on track slowly.

“Come on then, bedtime,” Karkat says softly. He doesn’t move towards the bed though, and neither do you, and for a second you both just stare at each other. Then his arms are closing around you and he’s nuzzling his face into your shirt. You place one hand on his lower back, hold him tighter to you, and gently kiss his forehead. You leave your lips resting against his warm skin, until he eventually tugs you away, and both of you fall haphazardly into the mess of pillows and blankets that you call a bed. 

He shifts around until you’re both laying comfortably, your head resting on his chest, and feel him start to drag his claws through your hair. He’s always so gentle, knowing how much weaker your human body is compared to his alien one, and the care in each of his touches forces the last of your exhausted, spiralling thoughts to the back of your head. Still, you can’t stop yourself from checking your mental clock one last time before the pills drag you down into a deep, dreamless sleep.

5 years, 3 months and 6 days since you first met Karkat. You could count it down to the second if you really wanted to, but you don’t think you can handle that right now.

5 years, 3 months and 6 days. They’ve not all been good days, far from it really, but if that all leads to now, if that all leads to the rest of your life spent with the boy you love, then you’re willing to deal with the bad days. Because they’re not quite so bad when he’s by your side, and you know the two of you can fight them off together. You’ve certainly fought worse things in your time. 

But now, in the present, his lips are just gently brushing against yours as you fall asleep, and he’s whispering a promise, a promise to always be there for you. You make a tired attempt at a smile, not bothering to speak or even open your eyes, but hoping he knows how much he means to you.

“I love you, Dave.” His whisper sounds a little distorted as you slip into the clutches of sleep.

You’ll make sure you tell him the same thing in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in an hour while listening to a playlist of dodie songs with rain edited into the background, and that's today's mood.


End file.
